Boris: "amazing ignorance on transport" - Caroline Pidgeon AM

1.53.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 15th Oct 2008

Caroline Pidgeon AM, the Liberal Democrats' transport spokesperson at the London Assembly, says the Mayor, also the chair of Transport for London, is clearly not fully clued up on the capital's transport issues.

Caroline says: "Mayor Johnson floundered when asked key questions of fact on whether London transport will be ready for the 2012 Olympics.

"He was clueless about TfL's £40 million cutback on the North London Line at Camden Station which will mean only six trains an hour to Stratford instead of eight.

"Furthermore, TfL needs to place a crucial contract with Cubic so people coming to the Olympics can use a single smartcard. Boris didn't know if they had, and amazingly didn't even recognise the contractors' name even though I'd asked the Mayor about this issue just last month.

"And lastly, on the issue of the East London line extension, phase two, he was still unable to give us the certainty we'll get the funding to build the rail link so south Londoners in Peckham and Clapham can get to East London easily.

"Londoners need these projects not just for the Olympics but for their everyday lives."

Speaking in response to questions from Caroline* at MQT the Mayor confined himself to insisting that current plans for the North London Line, the DLR and the East London Line phase two should not be targeted for cuts by the Treasury.

Caroline says: "For a Mayor who has set himself up as the chair of TfL it's very worrying. It's all very well falling back on platitudes in public but Boris was clearly dumbfounded by some of the issues I raised. While this could've been excused in his first few weeks or even months in office it's totally unacceptable now.

"Transport is a key issue if London is to keep working and the capital needs a Mayor who's on top of his game."